Ken's Facebook status: "Need to learn how (decide?) to juggle without feeling like a failure when I drop a ball. As it stands, they don't move, because they're in my hands. That sounded gross, but I actually don't mean it that way at all."
Aaron Lozano's response: "ya you do! Sike! Funny thing about juggling. When you drop one...you pick it up and start over again. Everyone starts at the beginning. they learn to handle all three balls at one time. You can do it!"
My message to Aaron: "Thanks...the problem may not be ability, but it's definitely with me wanting (demanding) to feel confident while doing it and "not horrible/bad" while failing. And when I see myself doing it lately, instead of not responding to the feeling (not that I usually do that), I mourn myself and feel worse because I feel bad and am scared...of what? Of...rejection, probably. Of being a "bad" and "stupid" and "failed" person. Right now, I'm a wreck, emotionally. I think. I would prefer to not exist. If I didn't believe in the kind of afterlife that's similar to the now-life, I'd just end it. I don't feel there's anything to gain by continuing to live, or anything to lose by ceasing. If how I feel/act/interpret now is my fate for eternity, I have zero desire to continue. If my current frame of interpretation means that all growth is never good enough, fuck growth and give me sweet release - a nothingness that insulates me from ALL feeling and possibility of feeling. I'm afraid of bad feelings. I have usually interpreted them as I'm failing, I've failed, I'm unacceptable, I'm worthless, I'm shameful. I may do 10x less shameful things than 10 years ago, but it just doesn't matter as long as I feel the same way with the same frequency as I always have. I swear to Whomever that I would rather have never been born than to have lived this fail/failing life. Every day convinces me further that I'm fucked because I cannot (will not...) let go of my self-loathing and assumptive interpretations I demand to be reality. To the smart people who have solutions that should work (stop acting just because you feel a thing...), the fix is simple. I think I need a lobotomy for that to happen. Or a lot of hypnosis or brainwashing. Or just some way to cease existing. One thing I won't take to "fix" this is anti-depressants. If the problem can be solved in a way that works for me, it will have to be in the change of my thought processes, not in the readjustment of chemicals. Those may dull the pain like nothingness/death, but not as completely, so why not just choose nothingness? Well, because I don't believe it exists. Now I'm mixing up belief and the demand for good feelings. This is all so fucked up. My brain/emotions are fucked up. And the potential conversations to be had with Mike, Tim, Jason, whomever doesn't give a shit how I feel but wants me to live truth, will result in me feeling stupider, more incompetent, and more of a failure. Unless they don't. But I'm afraid of them all the same and think they will, because what the fuck are they gonna do - hug me and tell me it will be ok? The only answer to this it seems is some words to tell me I'm thinking like a madman and stop doing it. Then comes the stupidity as I have no confidence that I can. Then comes the admonition that I don't have to feel confident to act differently. But do actions change interpretation? My interpretation seems pretty out-of-whack just in my interpretive comparison of how I act and how others act. Then there's the problem that I'm relying on a flawed interpretation to compare things and trusting it when I just said it was flawed. Bottom line: I want to not feel stupid. Ever. I want to feel like I'm valuable even when I'm scared and when I'm sad and when I'm angry. If that part could stick around, I don't know what I'd do or how I'd live. As it is, that's the first thing to go whenever there's a "negative" feeling. Of course, "positive" feelings are even better because they mean I'm awesome, I'm the shit, I'm amazing, Go Ken! Truth seems to offer something else to people who want good feelings over reality. It offers truth and doesn't concern itself with your infatuation over yourself and your self-worth/esteem. How do I know this? Probably in the same fucked up way I "know" I'm worthless every time I get a bad feeling. I don't know."
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You wrote: "Thanks...the problem may not be ability, but it's definitely with me wanting (demanding) to feel confident while doing it and "not horrible/bad" while failing."
ReplyDelete-When I read that, I found myself asking if that was unreasonable to ask? Do you think it is unreasonable to desire these things? There seems to be an underlying assumpion here... could it be "If I desire it- it must be bad"? Or "if I feel it, it must be wrong"?
I would like to talk to you about this. I'm not sure if you have figured out what the problem is...
I don't want to get into this too much, but it also struck me of your reliance on improving your standing in regards to the potential degree of shamefulness of your acts- but it might be significant to explore why "shame" is such a good indicator of value.
Again, I can talk about theory- I can impress my ideas upon other; but i'd rather understand your perceptions, not instill mine into you. Let's talk about this. JP
i've been perusing this post for awhile trying to soak it in and understand what you're saying ken. i hope that you can respond to jason's comment before this one, because i don't want to hijack what jason is saying. i believe there is some clarification that needs to be articulated in regards to a particular quote of yours.
ReplyDeletebefore i go into that, however, i want to state that my intention is not to belittle or bring you shame. i will try to state the truth of what i see / think / feel as objectively as possible. i do not wish for you to feel good or to feel bad in response to what i have to say. i only intend to say a thing, and i hope that thing is helpful.
QUOTE:
To the smart people who have solutions that should work (stop acting just because you feel a thing...), the fix is simple.
i think it's great and necessary that you feel things based on your own interpretation of life, but i think it's a problem when you misinterpret the message others are speaking to you and then lament yourself in response to that interpretation.
in particular, i know i have told you more times than i could ever remember that there is no fix. even if there is one, it's not going to make you feel better and it will not be simple: there is nothing simple about any of this.
i think that most, if not all, of your lament comes from the false dichotomies you make. i could wrong in this, but i see you consistently comparing yourself to the opposite of how you interpret yourself. for example: the smart people who have the solution are healthy, but you don't have / can't figure out the solution, so you must not be smart; therefore, you are unhealthy. not to mention, we've not even begun to talk about what health is, which leads me to the next example: you feel bad and are therefore unhealthy, so others who you believe to be healthy must feel good - at least different than you do. to state the obvious, you have no idea how i or anyone else feels.
to state something else that might be obvious, if you haven't been there, you don't know what "there" is. it's impossible for you to describe the landscape of a world you haven't experienced. no matter how many people have painted pictures for you, you simply cannot paint YOUR OWN picture until you experience it. and OUR OWN pictures are the only things that are truly meaningful to us. i highly suggest you start engaging the mysteries of life so that you can paint real pictures rather than presuming the caricatures you paint, which are simply the opposites of how you feel now, are true so you can rightly judge yourself and feel appropriately miserable. you can't rightly judge yourself or anyone else, so quit trying. and by "quit trying," i don't mean, "quit feeling miserable about how you don't measure up." i mean, "make choices about where you place your focus."
also, how smart one is does not determine one's ability to move forward into a world bigger than our emotions. i believe if you continue to compare yourself to the people around you, using their positives as an excuse to lament your negatives, you're never going to go into the spaces of life you have stated you want to go. and just so we're clear once again, "continuing to compare yourself" has nothing to do with how you feel. i'm talking about choices as to where you place you focus regardless of how you feel.
J.
ReplyDeleteAt some level, I think I'm operating on some sort of assumption that if I've thought it, it will be disagreed with, I will be wrong, and I will feel ashamed. The only part that matters in that sentence is that I don't want to feel shame. Apart from the feelings, I have no problem with being wrong. I don't think anybody does. This is ignoring having to deal with negatively-perceived consequences of our "wrong" decisions. I'm now trying to link "a desire to not feel a shame I've associated with being wrong" and "the recipe=process paradigm of thinking." These are probably related issues - assuming there is one way to think/act/feel, and assuming I will no think/act/feel whatever in that way. The times I've thought/felt that I've thought/acted/felt the right way, I believe have always followed the approval/validation/agreement of others. I'm focused on having my thoughts/feelings/actions validated at all times. Life is getting "harder" as I'm increasingly in realms where I have to perform and produce a thing in the realm of others that I fear may reject and shame me. I hamstring myself before I get there because I have the underlying assumption that I'll be wrong anyway when I get there, so I might as well give it something half-ass so when I'm "corrected," I won't be completely shattered because I'll remember that I didn't put all of myself into what I did.
Right now I'm afraid of what I'm typing, as I think that my shovel is digging with no pattern, helter-skelter, and that if I was more intentional I could be laying a foundation for change. You all, whom I assume are seeing things through a clearer lens than I, are looking around at the random holes and may ask me how my little kid holes will ever allow me to build a foundation, what I mean by laying a foundation, how I think it's possible, if I think it's possible, what I think it would look like, why I think it's necessary, what a little kid hole is, etc. I'll have to try to think up answers to those questions later, because it's 11:00am on a Sunday morning and you guys are talking in the living room...
i have a couple other quotes to respond to.
ReplyDeleteQUOTE:
Need to learn how (decide?) to juggle without feeling like a failure when I drop a ball.
i don't think you need to learn how to juggle without feeling like a failure when you fail at something. it might be the truth that you failed. you'll learn hardly anything at all if you don't face the truth of your actions in correlation to a particular goal or process you've engaged.
i think it would be extremely helpful for you and everyone else to remember that we all want truth more than lies, reality more than fiction when it comes to living our lives. upon remembering this important and obvious observation, the only thing left to do is choose where we place our focus. in fact, i think the more we come to understand just how ridiculous it is to choose lies over truth, and how beautiful it is to pursue reality over fiction, the more the choice we have to make in where we place our focus sort of fades away. understanding what we think, articulating what we believe sets up a context where something more than our purely subjective emotional state has weight. understanding opens the door to something more than the way i feel about a thing.
QUOTE:
But do actions change interpretation? My interpretation seems pretty out-of-whack just in my interpretive comparison of how I act and how others act.
what does it mean to interpret something?